


bet my life on you

by greymahariel (acceptnosubstitutes)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, Sex!Fail, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:42:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2780300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/greymahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Adamant, things between The Iron Bull and Inquisitor Lavellan get a little...intense. The heavy, violent, and emotional way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bet my life on you

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the main quest "Here Lies The Abyss".

“Out.”

It comes out a booming command, one Krem can count on one hand the time’s he’s heard it from Bull. The whole Skyhold tavern slows to a stop, quiet; one patron shifts in their seat, cough echoing.

Krem’s gaze slides to Lavellan, surprised the elf hasn’t cracked his bow yet, fist curling around the wood hard enough it seems like something is grinding apart. Or maybe it’s just how hard he’s gritting his teeth.

Krem’s not sure what’s worse here - the number of Wardens and Inquisition soldiers dead, dying, and/or injured or the number of demons that poured forth from the Fade and blood magic at Adamant. That’s not even considering the actual tumble into the Fade itself, which Krem hasn’t asked Bull or Lavellan for details and never will, given the way they’re eyeing each other like berserkers waiting to be released for the kill. 

Instead, he slides out of his seat and gently guides Dalish’s hesitant hand away from Bull’s arm, shaking his head. He stays behind once the last of the patrons and their group leaves, halfway out the door. Looks back.

“Boss?”

But it’s not Bull he’s asking, who’s made it pretty clear he wants Lavellan alone - complete in a room full of hard wooden tables and things that smash when they break. It’s Lavellan Krem’s concerned about, here.

Lavellan turns his head, stiffly, managing a very strained smile.

“It’s,” he pauses, because Krem knows he was going to say ‘it’s fine,’ except it’s very, very not, “Go. I’ll be fine.”

And that’s what lets Krem nod, close the door, and walk away.

I’ll be fine.

Means he’s still willing to use the word, if things get too rough. Now, now Krem just worries about the property damage.

He sighs and turns toward the castle and Josephine’s office.  
-

“Boss.”

It’s the first word that breaks the absolute silence sitting heavy in the air once everyone has exited. And it makes Lavellan want to scratch at his skin until it all peels right off.

He sets his bow aside with a clatter, tossing it behind him without a glance back.

Rule #1 - no going behind Lavellan’s back.

Bull raises his head in silent concession.

“Don’t call me that,” Lavellan says, hands reaching for the upper straps securing his breastplate in place. “Not here.”

Another concession granted.

Bull steps away from the bar, widens his stance so he’s placed comfortably in the middle of the room, mostly away from all but a few errant chairs and one table.

Lavellan narrows his eyes.

Almost without question, they’ll probably end up on top of that table eventually. But the message is clear enough.

Just them. Which means Bull’s superior strength and a greatly reduced field of movement for Lavellan. Clearly, Bull wants this over as soon as possible.

Lavellan feels his lips pull back, baring his teeth at the other man. See about that.

His armor hits the floor somewhere behind him with a clash of metal. He leaves his pants on though his undershirt and boots follow, kicked off somewhat in the direction of the rest of his equipment. Bull follows suit.

Lavellan circles to the right, and Bull crouches low, lowering his horns. He earns a short, harsh laugh from his Inquisitor.

So frontal assault is out of the question, is it? Bull is really, _really_ underestimating how pissed off Lavellan is right now. How angry and how much he wants to hurt.

He knows it too, eyes widening in the split second between Lavellan cradling the flask to his chest and letting it shatter against the ground.

It hits Lavellan hard, a sudden whump descending around his shoulders and reverberating all the way to the ground. Dulls out the rest of his senses. Sets a rushing in his ears despite the lack of present noise.

Each nerve in Lavellan’s body sings, strung tight and aching within moments, like his body’s a bloody live wire.

It’s electrifying. It hurts.

Invigorating.

Lavellan shifts low, feet pivoted to spring forward, and time _blurs_.

In the moment Bull saw that flask, recognized what it meant if not which one it was, he’d unconsciously corrected and started to stand. By the time Lavellan’s cleared personal space with the qunari, Bull’s high enough Lavellan’s fist slams into his unprotected abdomen with brutal force.

The blow lifts him off his feet and sends him crashing back through tables and chairs that give way in an instant.

Lavellan bounds back and waits what seems like an eternity for Bull to gain his feet in slow motion, grinning savagely at the snarl that bites the edges of his mouth.

“All right,” Bull says, voice discordant as time slows and speeds up again, “All right.”

And then he’s there, a looming presence overhead, moving disturbingly fast for a giant his size. One minute there’s a hand in his collar, the next the wall’s a much closer presence than Lavellan remembers.

Full contact. 

Lavellan hits it with the center of his back aflame, head smashing unforgivingly against hard wood. He slides to an ungraceful drop on the table a few feet below, dazed and groaning.

Bull doesn’t stop, doesn’t let him catch his breath, but pins a grip around his throat that’s mildly choking. Lavellan instinctively claws at his arm, trying to force it away to no use.

He’s lifted off the table like a rag doll, let swing in the air for seconds before Bull drops him to his feet on the floor. Bull squeezes once, a warning, and lets go, dropping back.

There’s a moment of silence while Lavellan catches his breath.

“You done?” Bull’s voice rings flat. He knows the answer, but formalities and all.

Lavellan shakes his head, swallowing convulsively for the moisture to make his voice audible.

“Fuck you.”

“Dealer’s choice.”

Bull drops into a crouch again, but this time keeps his eyes on Lavellan’s face and braces his arms and hands like he’s ready to heft his axe high above his head and let it fall.

Lavellan draws a sharp breath. Bull wouldn’t. Not here. But out of the corner of his eye, Lavellan half imagines a blood red aura, spooling malevolence toward him.

It’s calculated, _is_ it calculated, and Lavellan rises to it despite himself, almost dizzy from the rush of blood pooling down, catching heat in his belly.

But it’s not enough. It’s not nearly enough to stamp out the smells continuing to haunt Lavellan’s waking thoughts.

Copper high in the air. Rot. Burning flesh. 

An acidic taste blooms in the back of his mouth. The screams, the shouting, the cacophony of false noise assaulting his ears makes him want to vomit until he coughs up nothing but air.

So Bull clicks his tongue and switches positions to pluck the elf hurtling toward him neatly out of the air. Gets a swift kick to the chest that punches out a curse for his trouble, but he uses the momentum to swing Lavellan bodily through space and, cushioning the elf’s head in a hand, into a crushing landing against another table.

Impact alone knocks the breath out of Lavellan, leaving him wheezing and gasping for air long before he recognizes the tears blurring his vision. The salty, wet tracks they leave down his cheeks.

Bull follows him down but only leans in to capture his mouth when Lavellan leans up and accepts it. They come apart and Lavellan shudders, seeking to pull his legs up the rest of the way and curl up on the table in the tightest ball he can manage until he stops shaking. 

“No,” Bull tells him, voice low.

Instead, Lavellan’s legs are pushed apart, arms brought back and pinned above his head. So terribly exposed and lost in his own head, Lavellan simply lets Bull move him as he will.

Bull palms his crotch and Lavellan’s hips rock up of their own volition only to be shut back down. The qunari hums, gripping Lavellan’s wrists easily with one hand and leaning his weight on the elf’s left side to free up a hand to tug the laces of Lavellan’s pants free.

“Say it.” Bull nuzzles into his throat, the flat side of his horns cool against the sudden flush creeping up Lavellan’s face. “If you don’t want this. Any time. Tell me.”

“Yes,” Lavellan breathes, choking on a low whine when Bull’s hand finally slips inside his pants.

Bull knows him, knows him well by now, and as a result if Lavellan was halfway hard during the fight, he’s the rest of the way there by the time Bull eases him out of the rest of his clothes. 

He takes his hand off Lavellan long enough to nudge his chin with clear intent. Lavellan opens his mouth obediently, lavishing the fingers that push inside with enthusiastic attention if not technique. Bull lets out a deep sigh, twisting just right against Lavellan’s thigh he can feel the clear interest from his end as well.

Bull removes his fingers, but pauses them just inches above heated flesh desperate for his attention. He cocks his head, listening to something outside so intently Lavellan makes an effort to do the same despite the way he can’t hear for his heart pounding loud enough to wake the dead.

Bull chuckles lowly. “We’ve got guests, little elf.”

Lavellan scowls at him, opening his mouth to tell him off for that infernal nickname, only for his breath to catch in his throat as Bull leans in close, full muscle weight dropping down on him.

“Quiet.”

The word, no, _command_ , whispered soft against his ear combined with teeth that gently tease at his ear lobe before Bull pulls back dissolves any intelligent response from Lavellan into a jerky nod.

Bull pulls at the ties of his own pants, pushing them down just enough and then more or less lining himself up next to Lavellan. Who eases his head back, tipping his eyes up at the ceiling or else he’s going to break the quiet rule embarrassingly fast.

“Eyes,” comes the pleasant sounding reminder.

Lavellan rolls his in rebellion, but lifts his head just as Bull gets a firm grip around them both and _moves_. It thunks back down against the table hard enough Lavellan sees stars.

“Words,” Lavellan wheezes, barely biting back groans, “you never specified.”

Bull chuckles, low and in the back of his throat. His absence doesn’t register immediately and Lavellan’s hips spend a few frustrated seconds meeting nothing but air before he’s jerked to the edge of the table and engulfed in something wet and very, very warm.

“Creators _damn you_ ,” Lavellan grits out, biting down on his bottom lip hard enough it bleeds.

Copper floods his mouth and Lavellan turns his head to spit the blood out, but he’s quiet. He’s fucking quiet. But he won’t be much longer, the way Bull is moving like that.

Lavellan leans back, stretches his arms out far enough he winces at the strain. He digs his fingers into the other edge of the table, nails biting into the wood. Tries to focus on that and not the tongue sweeping down the underside of him or the graze of teeth dragging gentle pressure in synchronized movement.

He does, however, spread his legs wider, rewarded with a pleased hum.

Oh, for Cassandra to walk in on him now - Herald of Andraste, leader of the Inquisition, _her friend_ , stretched and spread across a tavern table like a common whore. 

Like a…

Lavellan squeezes his eyes shut, cursing a muttered stream under his breath but he can’t stop the flood of images - blood, scorched wood, bodies piled high, frozen terror spread across cooling skin - spilling out in his mind, threatening to lift him from the pleasant haze of nothingness Bull’s working him towards.

His breath catches in a choked, wet sob.

Lavellan goes from lying across a table to cradled in Bull’s arms, his face pressed into the qunari’s chest, hands clenching and unclenching in his pants. The two of them sink slowly down to the floor until Bull’s back is resting against one of the legs of the table. Thick fingers simply run through Lavellan’s hair, a bare hint of comfort, while he breaks.

I’m sorry.

He’s muttering it, murdering the word until his brain fails to assign it meaning anymore, until it’s all blurred together into one syllable. One word. Over and over. Endless loop.

And Bull simply holds him closer, burying his head into the crook of his arm. Shielding him from the rest of the world.

Eventually Lavellan pulls back and is allowed to shift away, but not so far he’s outside Bull’s reach. Exhausted of all emotion, he sits there and stares at the floor.

He hiccups. Bull half jerks away from him. 

It’s the most ridiculous thing ever to startle a big hulking brute of a man who shouts sexual innuendo at high dragons. Something bright suddenly bursts in Lavellan’s chest, and that hurts too, but a different sort of pain he fears he’s slowly growing addicted to.

For the moment, he just laughs. Hoarsely, sounding more like he’s half hacking up a lung and deliriously exuberant at the prospect, but laughs.

He can’t stop.

“Bull,” he says between gasps, massacring all speech and not giving a damn, “am I losing it?”

Lavellan feels himself shifted up, fully lifted off the ground. Cradled in his arms, Lavellan’s a near buffet for Bull, who drops a kiss to the top of his head, then his neck, pressed into his left shoulder and slowly spiraling down his chest to his hips. There he sucks in a little harder, nipping in just shy of breaking skin.

But it’s good. A good pain.

The Iron Bull is silent, righting Lavellan in his lap as he redresses the both of them, not speaking until he’s finished the knot on Lavellan’s pants.

He doesn’t answer that question. Lavellan squeezes his eyes shut, knowing what that means. 

Bull doesn’t lie to him. He’s the most honest being Lavellan has ever met and he never, ever lies about things that matter.

But he’s neither cold, nor interested in harming Lavellan in that way, the way that can’t be smoothed over by the slide of hands over a body he’s mapped out and come to know like it was his own.

So he won’t answer. Not when maybe, maybe Lavellan _is_ losing all means of gasp on reality.

Instead, he tips Lavellan’s head back, makes him open his eyes, and dips into him with a kiss that seems more like he’s trying to pour himself into the elf, to seal up the fracturing edges shifting loose from a war, a cause Lavellan never asked for.

Can’t handle.

“Then I’ll lose myself with you.”

Breathed against Lavellan’s mouth, Bull can’t stop his hands from trembling and Lavellan knows what that means too.

Still, he said it.

Lavellan leans up and grasps hold of his horns with both hands, using them to pull him up to his knees and hold him there properly. He presses their foreheads together. Holds on for dear life.

Arms curl around his back. The same.

Bull said it. And he doesn’t lie. 

They both close their eyes.

It’s enough to exist. Just exist, and together.


End file.
